Vermont Bar Journal, Vol. 40, No. 2 Vermont Bar Journal, Fall 2017, Vol. 48, No. 3 | Page 34
Process
Some of the most common mistakes
are applications which only outline in-
direct legal funding, failure to show
how many might be served under a
proposed grant, or asking for funds
for organizational support rather than
direct legal services. I also note that
at times there appear to be missed
opportunities of potential grantees
who might benefit from more collab-
oration with other applicants and/or
communication that might eliminate
duplication of efforts.
When I asked attorney Bugbee the same
question, he corrected me by saying, “I am
not sure I would call it a mistake-- the big-
gest deficiency would be a project or orga-
nization whose scope is too limited in the
number of people it benefits.”
The review process begins once all ap-
plications are received. Attorney Barber
helped explain the review process by stat-
ing that the process is quite lengthy as it
takes a fair amount of time to go over all
of the grant applications and that on av-
erage, they receive approximately 17 ap-
plications. Once the VBF receives all the
grant requests, the VBF Executive Director,
Debbie Bailey, organizes them and sends
them out to each member of the Commit-
tee. Each Committee Member then takes
the time to review all grant applications
and to craft questions for the commit-
tee point person on each grant applica-
tion to follow up with potential grantees
for more information. Once all of the re-
sponses are received the Committee will
meet in person. The Committee gener-
ally spends the better part of the day re-
viewing each application as a Committee
and determining the recommendations as
a Committee to the VBF Board.
The Grant’s Committee Chair will then
write up recommendations and sub-
mit them to the VBF Board for consider-
ation. I also asked attorney Bugbee how
long a candidate should anticipate wait-
ing before a response is given and he said
that the screening process takes about
a month, and the recommendations are
taken up by vote at the next VBF board
meeting.
Once the grants are awarded the VBF
uses monitoring procedures to insure
accountability from its grant recipients.
Each applicant as part of the application
process is asked to sign a Grant Contract,
agreeing to use the money in a certain
way and to report its use. All competi-
tive grant recipients must agree to both
an interim six-month report, due no lat-
er than January 31 and a final report, due
no later than August 31 which is to be sub-
mitted to the VBF. In the Interim Report,
grantees should highlight the specific con-
tributions or impact of IOLTA funding and
describe and quantify the services or pro-
grams made possible by the grant expen-
diture to date. The Grantee, in the Final
Report, should relate the impact of fund-
ing, covering the entire grant cycle, and in-
clude a program narrative and a financial
statement summarizing the expenditure of
the IOLTA funds. Grantees must either re-
turn any unspent funds at the end of the
grant cycle, or submit a carry forward re-
quest with a full grant application for the
next grant cycle.
While a lengthy and complicated pro-
cess, the Grants Committee is a fine-tuned
machine. They play an important role in
improving access to justice and legal ser-
vices to Vermonters in need. Check out the
VBF website for a list of this year’s grant-
ees. Of course, none of this would be pos-
sible without the assistance of all attorneys
who place their IOLTA accounts in institu-
tions with higher interest rates and attor-
neys who donate to the VBF. Thank you all
for your support!
The VBA is pleased to offer pocket
Constitutions, along with our panel pre-
sentation videos or written templates,
to any lawyer or judge who would like
to present to a school or civic group
about the Constitution. Last year, many
members mobilized to bring presenta-
tions to schools around the state, and
the reports were quite uplifting.
Please keep the momentum going
and take an hour of your time to edu-
cate our youth and the public about this
amazing, surprisingly short, complex,
relevant and effective document gov-
erning all of our civil rights and estab-
lishing the rule of law.
Contact us at [email protected] if you
are interested in presenting and would
like to utilize any of these resources.
VBA President Mike Kennedy and Executive Director
Teri Corsones at the 2017 Constitution Day
34
THE VERMONT BAR JOURNAL • FALL 2017
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